My 2009 journal article, “Web 2.0: New Challenges for the Study of E-Democracy in an Era of Informational Exuberance,” which originally appeared in I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society 5 (1), pp. 9-41, has now been reprinted in Stephen Coleman’s and Peter Shane’s excellent new edited volume, Connecting Democracy: Online Consultation and the Flow of Political Communication (MIT Press). My chapter has been revised very slightly, but it is essentially the same as the 2009 version.
Connecting Democracy is the culmination of a three-year project in which I participated: the International Working Group on Online Consultation and Public Policymaking. This was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and it was steered superbly by Peter and Stephen through our several meetings—in March 2007 at Harvard University’s Kennedy School, in November 2007 at the University of Leeds, in March 2008 at The Ohio State University, in November 2008 at the Aspen Institute in Washington, D.C., and in April 2009 at Sciences Po in Paris, France.
Links:
MIT site, with more information and sample chapters.
The full citation for the reprinted article is: Andrew Chadwick (2012) “Web 2.0: New Challenges for the Study of E-Democracy in an Era of Informational Exuberance” in Coleman, S. and Shane, P (eds) Connecting Democracy: Online Consultation and the Flow of Political Communication (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA), pp. 45–75.
Workshop: Digital Methods: Tools for Analysis -
I can’t make it up to Manchester for this conference due to a clash with teaching, but Rob Procter and Rachel Gibson are presenting some preliminary findings from a pilot study of mining public opinion on Twitter, on which I’ve collaborated: “An Experiment in Opinion Mining Tweets” by Rob Procter, Manchester eResearch Centre, University of Manchester; Rachel Gibson, Institute for Social Change, University of Manchester; Andrew Chadwick, Royal Holloway, University of London; Sophia Ananiadou, National Centre for Text Mining, University of Manchester; and Andrew Hudson-Smith, Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, UCL.
Building an Effective Social Media Campaign: A Roundtable Debate
2.00–6.00 pm, 2 November, The Attlee Suite, Portcullis House, Westminster
Organised by the University of Manchester and the Hansard Society
This roundtable, organised as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science and taking place during Parliament Week (Oct 31 – Nov 6) brings together academics, politicians, activists, news producers and journalists to debate how social media are being used to promote protest and political change.
The discussion will look at the use of Twitter & Facebook and examine the development of social media based protest and how digital strategies for action are rapidly coalescing and becoming essential to any modern-day campaign. Finally, it will examine the role of ‘old’ media in facilitating and promoting the success of new media campaigns and ask if digital activism and online exposure are sufficient to drive the momentum offline or if it requires mainstream media coverage.
Agenda
2.00 – 2.30: Welcome, Registration and Refreshments
2.30 – 4.00: Roundtable discussion: The view from the ‘inside’ – Practitioners. Chair: Dr Andy Williamson.
- Mark Pack, Blogger (LibDemVoice)
- Dr Julian Huppert MP
- Baroness Deech
- Elizabeth Linder, Politics & Government Specialist (Facebook)
4.00 – 4.15: Refreshments
4.15 – 6.00: Roundtable discussion: The view from ‘outside’ – Media & Academic analysis.
Chair: Prof Rachel Gibson (University of Manchester).
- Matthew Eltringham (BBC UGC Hub)
- Alberto Nardelli (Tweetminster)
- Professor Andrew Chadwick (University of London, Royal Holloway)
For more information and to register for this event, please click here.
Update: You can now download my paper here.
Here’s the abstract. And here’s the panel I’m on, ably assembled by Bruce Bimber and Lance Bennett.
I’ll also be a discussant on a further panel in the Internet and Politics section.
This paper combines theory and empirical analysis to explore recent systemic change in the nature of political communication. Drawing on evidence from Britain and the United States on the changing relationships among politicians, media, and publics, I argue for the concept of the hybrid media system. This system is built upon interactions among old and new media and their associated technologies, genres, norms, behaviors, and organizations. Actors in the hybrid media system are articulated by complex and evolving power relations based upon adaptation and interdependence. We now require a holistic approach to the role of information and communication in politics—one that does not exclusively focus on new or old media, but instead empirically maps where the distinctions between new and old matter, and where they do not. The focus of my attention in this article is news. First, I outline an ontology of hybridity. Next, I discuss assemblages of hybridized news making. Then I examine the phenomenon of WikiLeaks as an example of power and interdependence in the construction of news.
James Stanyer and I have just had a new article published. It’s in the latest volume of the bestselling book about British politics, Developments in British Politics 9, edited by Richard Heffernan, Philip Cowley, and Colin Hay, and published by Palgrave Macmillan.
The chapter covers new media usage patterns, the changing face of news consumption, the growing pressure on newspapers, Gordon Brown’s relationship with the press, the changing nature of media management inside Number 10, and the experience of Britain’s first live televised prime ministerial debates during the election of 2010.
To give you a flavour of what’s in it, here’s an excerpt, from the conclusion.
As this chapter has shown, the political communication environment in Britain is in transition. While broadcasting still remains at the heart of national political life, the nature of mediated politics is evolving rapidly and in directions that are sometimes contradictory, sometimes complementary. The election leaders’ debates reinforced television’s predominance, though as we saw above, even those events were accompanied by a panoply of online activism, some of it facilitated by the broadcasters themselves.
The way citizens consume political information is changing in the new digital environment. As use of the internet and mobile technologies has grown, so they have become an important port of call for those seeking political news. Audiences have never had access to so much political information through such a variety of news outlets. At the same time, these technologies provide new opportunities for audiences to engage in political activities, express their opinions and contribute content in historically unprecedented ways. The evidence suggests that growth in the numbers taking advantage of these interactive opportunities is likely to continue.
There are, however, cautionary themes. Concerns about the stratified nature of the digitised public sphere remain. Those that take advantage of new technologies to participate in politics remain a minority and still tend to be wealthy, well educated and younger. Second, this new communicative digital space has also impacted upon politicians and media organisations, creating opportunities, but at the same time new uncertainties. Established news outlets remain a visible presence but face financial pressures. While news organisations have responded innovatively, competition, shrinking audiences, and lower revenues – especially from advertising – have negatively affected their resource bases. There have often been no alternatives to cost cutting. The public service provider, the BBC, has fared well up to now, but it too is likely to face future financial constraints, and this may well have implications for the quality of news citizens receive.
Politicians and their strategists have been forced to adapt to a rapidly pluralising digital sphere. Party leaders have promoted themselves using a range of interactive features to try and connect with citizens, albeit with varying degrees of success. While the internet has opened up new ways for politicians to interact with the public, it has also posed a series of challenges. Some aspects of the online information environment have proved difficult to control. The fast-moving news cycles require constant monitoring and are significantly more difficult to direct. The public spread of gossip and rumour is perhaps more common place. While political elites have been keen to be seen embracing new media, they are understandably less keen to be seen reverting to necessary but dubious methods of control. The leaked emails that led to “Smeargate” reveal, not only that some old command and control techniques of the broadcast era are still hugely important, but also that the new media environment is inherently porous. Understanding the complex new political communication environment in the twenty-first century remains a challenge, but one to which students of politics must rise if they are to fully comprehend the nature of British democracy.
The book as a whole is excellent and as usual it is a must-read for anyone interested in British politics. You can buy a copy now from Amazon here.
It will publish in the U.S. in August and will be available here.
The full reference for our piece is: Chadwick, A. and Stanyer, J. (2011) “The Changing News Media Environment” in Heffernan, R., Cowley, P. and Hay, C. (eds) Developments in British Politics 9 (Palgrave-Macmillan), pp. 215-237.
If you would like a copy of this article, please email me (firstname.lastname@rhul.ac.uk)
I’m in the middle of writing a new book entitled The Hybrid Media System: Politics and Power, to be published by Oxford University Press in New York and Oxford. I’ve just completed the rough first draft of the chapter that provides an extended case study and a particular interpretation of WikiLeaks.
Here are some brief excerpts. They’re a bit drafty and elliptical: I’m trying to save the whole thing for the book itself, though I might mobilize some of this material for my upcoming ECPR paper in Reykjavik at the end of August.
… As this chapter shows, to depict WikiLeaks or professional journalists or online hacktivist networks only in terms of each group’s power to “act upon” a preexisting set of media relations is to miss the truly important point here. WikiLeaks constructs an important boundary space between old and new media. It conducts technologically-enabled raids across each side of this boundary in a continual quest for resources that enable it to exercise power. But these power resources have always been conditioned by relations of profound interdependence with other political and media actors, whether they be online or offline networks of activists, or professional news organizations…
We might ask: if WikiLeaks must coexist in symbiosis with the press and broadcasters, is WikiLeaks powerful? But we can just as easily reverse this question: if the press and broadcasters must coexist in symbiosis with WikiLeaks, are the press and broadcasters powerful? These are valid enough questions but they perhaps rest upon an inadequate conceptualization of power. For in the hybrid media system, power is not always exercised in the context of a zero-sum game; it may also emerge from physical and mediated interactions that are socially and technologically constructed and which evolve over time, in a diverse range of settings. What actually counts as an effective set of resources for powerful action has in this case emerged from the interactions between WikiLeaks and other actors. Some of these interactions were colored by power operating as a resource for the issuing of ultimatums and vetos in focused, discrete environments, often behind closed doors and involving only elite players. This was the case, for example, when Assange and the Guardian came together at the last minute to hammer out the terms of the deal for the cables release. But sometimes power has been dispersed across broader networks, such as when WikiLeaks has used its technological infrastructure to gather data leaks and channel these to the press, or when it has capitalized on the expertise of activists on the ground in various geographical locations—in yet another contradiction, WikiLeaks is transnational but also embedded within specific national media systems. These broader networks have also been on display when hacktivists have come to the symbolic aid of both WikiLeaks and their press partners, as happened in the aftermath of the cables leaks…
Taken overall, WikiLeaks and the professionals have innovated together, effectively creating new ways of working with new technologies, techniques, and operating assumptions. The news partners and WikiLeaks have shared these resources among themselves and sometimes with the public. The development of meaningful capacity for action in this new type of technology-enabled, not-quite-journalism has involved a process of learning, co-creation, and co-evolution in the creative pursuit of new norms and working practices…
This is a story of interdependence among old and new media in the gathering and production of information and the exploitation of that information as news. It should come as no surprise, then, that WikiLeaks, their press partners in Britain, America, Germany, France, and Spain, and online networks of activists have together played a crucial contribution to the ongoing construction of a media system in which they also have the capacity to so decisively intervene—a hybrid media system.
Phil Howard and Malcolm Parks are putting together a special issue of the Journal of Communication on communication technologies and political resistance in the Middle East and North Africa. The email from Malcolm Parks and the full call are below.
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Email from Malcolm Parks:
Over the past several months events in the Middle East and elsewhere in the developing world have placed an international spotlight on the role of social media in facilitating and resisting social change. Communication researchers should be at the center of efforts to understand these events. I am pleased to announce that a special issue of the Journal of Communication will be devoted to this exciting and important topic. Prof. Philip Howard, whose recent book, The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Information Technology and Political Islam, makes an important contribution to our understanding of the “Arab Spring,” has agreed to serve as Guest Co-editor of this special issue planned for early 2012. Deadline for submission is August 15, 2011.
Please feel free to contact Prof. Howard (pnhoward@uw.edu) or me (macp@uw.edu) should you have further questions.
Malcolm (Mac) Parks
Editor, Journal of Communication
Professor of Communication
Department of Communication Box 353740
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195
Social Media and Political Change: Journal of Communication Special Issue
The “Arab Spring” as well as recent events in other parts of the world have demonstrated that new communication technologies, such as mobile phones and the internet, are simultaneously new tools for social movement organizing and new tools for surveillance by authoritarian regimes. Though communication theory necessarily transcends particular technologies, software, and websites, digital media have clearly become an important part of the toolkit available to political actors. These technologies are also becoming part of the research toolkit for scholars interested in studying the changing patterns in interpersonal, political, and global communication.
How have changing patterns of interpersonal, political, and global communication created new opportunities for social movements, or new means of social control by political elites? The role of social media in new patterns of communication is especially dramatic across North Africa and the Middle East, where decades of authoritarian rule have been challenged—with varying degrees of success. Social media—broadly understood as a range of communication technologies that allow individuals to manage the flow of content across their own networks of family, friends and other social contacts—seem to have had a crucial role in the political upheaval and social protest in several countries. Mass communication has not ceased to be important, but is now joined with a variety of other media with very different properties that may reinforce, displace, counteract, or create fresh new phenomena.
This Special Issue seeks original qualitative, comparative, and quantitative research on social media and political change, particularly as related to events in North Africa and the Middle East, but we are also receptive to work on political change in other parts of the developing world. We would welcome manuscripts from a diverse range of methodologies, and covering diverse communities and cultures. Methodological innovations or mixed method approaches are particularly encouraged, and manuscripts on the interpersonal and intergroup aspects of social movement organizing are central interest. Whatever the approach, our goal is to select manuscripts that are grounded in the actual use of social media in promoting or resisting political change in developing countries and regions.
If you have questions regarding the appropriateness of a potential submission, please contact Prof. Philip N. Howard (pnhoward@uw.edu).
Deadline for Submission is August 15th, 2011, through http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jcom. Manuscripts must confirm to all JOC guidelines, including the use of APA 6th edition format and a limit of 30 pages total manuscript length. Please indicate your desire to be considered for the special issue in your cover letter.
I’m presenting a paper at the UK Political Studies Association conference in London next week. If you’re at the conference, drop in.
I’ve been a member of the APSA Information Technology and Politics Section for longer than I care to remember. I’ve served on its executive committee and I’ve presented quite a few papers to its APSA panels. But over the last few years the section has become an even more interesting scholarly community than it was when I first joined.
ITP has its own scholarly journal, the Journal of Information Technology and Politics (JITP), published professionally and independently by Taylor and Francis. In the capable editorial hands of Stu Shulman, its senior editorial board, and its huge editorial board, JITP goes from strength to strength.
Joining the section gets you free access to the JITP. The section dues and the subsidised journal subscription combined comes to just $15 (£9) per year for PhD students and just $20 (£12) per year for full-time faculty.
For the price of two or three sandwich lunches you get to read around thirty journal articles per year, as well as book reviews, and policy viewpoints. If you so wish, you can participate in the governance of the ITP section through its online and offline meetings and its prize-awarding committees. You can participate in a long-standing email list, an annual thematic conference, and, subject to peer review, the APSA conference itself—easily the largest and most prestigious political science conference in the world. Oh, and the section even has its own regular newsletter.
But more than this, the individuals who are active in the ITP section are among the warmest, friendliest, and most approachable folks I’ve met in academia. They are internationalist in their outlook, they positively encourage a broad range of perspectives, and they are particularly good at encouraging and supporting young researchers.
What have you got to lose? Sign up by adding the section membership to your profile when you register or renew your membership at APSA.
Andrew Chadwick (2011) “Explaining the Failure of an Online Citizen Engagement Initiative: The Role of Internal Institutional Variables” Journal of Information Technology and Politics 8 (1): 21-40.
Abstract
This article presents an exploratory case study based on fieldwork consisting of in-depth, semistructured interviews and group discussions with administrative, legal, political, and technology staff involved in an online citizen engagement initiative in “TechCounty,” a pseudonymous U.S. local government authority operating in one of the most favorable sociodemographic and technological contexts imaginable. In contrast with many of the dominant approaches in the literature, the article reveals how a rich, complex, and sometimes surprising array of internal institutional variables explains the initiative’s failure. The article highlights the fragile and uncertain adoption of online engagement by public organizations and the significance of this study’s method for building theory and guiding future research.
Keywords: Citizen engagement; democracy; e-democracy; governance; Internet; online consultation; online forums; organizations; public services.
Link.
Email me or direct message me on Twitter if you would like a free PDF copy of this journal article.
If you’re thinking of teaching a course about the internet, new media, and politics…
Just sayin’…
Andrew Chadwick (2011) “Britain’s First Live Televised Party Leaders’ Debate: From the News Cycle to the Political Information Cycle” Parliamentary Affairs 64 (1), pp. 24-44.
Abstract
Britain’s first ever live, televised, party leaders’ debate took place on 15 April 2010, during one of the most intriguing and closely fought general election campaigns in living memory. Arguably the most important single development in the media’s treatment of politics since the arrival of television during the 1959 campaign, the leaders’ debate and its aftermath provide a unique window on the political communication environment of contemporary Britain. This article focuses on the surrounding processes of mediation before, during and after the event, particularly the interactions between broadcasting, press and online media, including citizen opinion expressed and coordinated through online social network sites. A narrative reconstruction of journalists’, political parties’ and online activists’ behaviour raises the question of whether traditional understandings of the “news cycle” should now be replaced by a broader concern with what I term “political information cycles”: assemblages of personnel, practices, genres and temporalities in which supposedly “new” online media are increasingly integrated with supposedly “old” broadcast and press media.
For more publications, click here.
I have a new journal article out…
Andrew Chadwick (2011) “The Political Information Cycle in a Hybrid News System: The British Prime Minister and the ‘Bullygate’ Affair” International Journal of Press/Politics 16 (1), pp. 1-27.
Abstract
During a weekend in February 2010, just a few weeks before the most closely fought general election campaign in living memory, British prime minister Gordon Brown became the subject of an extraordinary media spectacle. Quickly labeled “bullygate,” it centered on Brown’s alleged psychological and physical mistreatment of colleagues working inside his office in Number 10, Downing Street. These were potentially some of the most damaging allegations ever to be made about the personal conduct of a sitting British prime minister, and bullygate was a national and international news phenomenon. This study provides an analysis of the processes of mediation during the affair. It is based on close, real-time observation and logging of a wide range of press, broadcast, and online material, as the story broke, evolved, and faded, over a five-day period. The study reveals the increasingly hybridized nature of news systems and argues that traditional understandings of the “news cycle” should now be replaced by a broader concern with the “political information cycle.” Political information cycles are complex assemblages in which the personnel, practices, genres, technologies, and temporalities of supposedly “new” online media are hybridized with those of supposedly “old” broadcast and press media. This hybridization now decisively shapes power relations among news actors. The combination of news professionals’ dominance and the integration of nonelite actors in the construction and contestation of news at multiple points in a political information cycle’s life span are important characteristics of contemporary political communication.
Keywords
media hybridity, news cycle, political information cycle, broadcasting, television, newspapers, Internet, Twitter, blogs, assemblages, time, power.
The first title in the book series I recently established, Oxford Studies in Digital Politics, has just been published: The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Information Technology and Political Islam, by Philip N. Howard.
Click here for more detail on Phil’s book (pdf). See also Phil’s site for his Project on Information Technology and Political Islam. Click here for more detail on the book series and forthcoming titles.